What else could he possibly mean when he said the following during a press conference today:
MR. SNOW: I was speaking last night with a service member just recently back; he was at our party. And he's frustrated because a lot of the activities they do never get reported. Well, one of the things that never seems to be counterposed to the death counts is what our servicemen and women are doing. And one of the things they're doing is they're fighting the bad guys. And as General Chirelli said recently, the bad guys haven't won a single battle. For obvious reasons, going back to Vietnam era, people are loathe to do body counts. But it probably is worth at least giving a general impression of relative battlefield success of what's going on, which is a great many members of al Qaeda in Anbar and also people who are committing acts of violence in Baghdad and elsewhere are dying or being captured as a result of these military activities.So again the Bush administration transports us back to 2004-2005 when they were still claiming that we were winning in Iraq - the only thing wrong was that the media wasn't reporting that we were actually winning. That's the only possible meaning of Snow's words, and take into account that Laura Bush said the same thing today, that it's the media's fault for not reporting all the good news coming out of Iraq - that means this is a concerted message being put out by the White House, that things are actually going well but-for the negative media coverage.
Q Tony, is this something that the White House would like the America public to judge? We killed this many bad guys, versus how many of us are killed? Is that something you want as a metric from now on?
MR. SNOW: I don't know. But I think -- I think the most -- I think it is important that Americans learn as much as possible about what's going on in Iraq, and that's not merely militarily, to get a sense of where the violence is located, how widespread it is, what's going on in civil society, is there hope in certain provinces, what is the full picture in Iraq. And I'm afraid that that is something that people have not fully received. And so we will be talking about the fuller picture, good news and bad news....
Q And if you look back on numbers that have been given here and in the Pentagon about how many enemy there are over the years, I mean, at one point it's 5,000, at one it's 20,000. So in the last three months, you've killed or captured 5,000 -- it seems like all the enemies should be gone at this point.
MR. SNOW: Well, again, Martha, I know. But I'm just telling you that -- I told you I'm not going to put the President on the couch. I'm offering you a possible explanation. But it is important that people get a fuller picture. And you've heard it from troops, I've heard it from troops, and it should not be limited simply to that. But one also should not assume that people out there are simply dying in vain or that our men and women are not accomplishing things when they're taking on the people who are committing acts of violence that has killed thousands of Iraqis.
This is insane. Either we're winning or we're losing. And if a soldier goes up to the President's press secretary and expresses frustration that all the "good news" out of Iraq isn't being reported, then tell him to talk to his incoming Defense Secretary who just told Congress that we're not winning in Iraq.
We are not winning in Iraq.
We are losing this war because the White House thinks the only thing going wrong is the media coverage. This is beyond delusional at this point. The Republicans are unfit to run our country in such dangerous times.
